Swamp Things - Session 2 | B2; The Keep on the Borderlands

Entering the Swamps - Session 2; The Keep on the Borderlands

Navigating the River

Hraf, Bimmy and Uh-Ga, our three favorite nomadic barbarian warriors, had camped at the edge of the river, near the ruins of the old Ferryman's shack, where last we left them in episode 1 of B2 - The Keep on the Borderlands. Using the rickety rowboat of questionable sea-worthiness, the trio attempted to get themselves across the river, with the berserker Uh-Ga piloting the small vessel. It didn't take long for the strong currents of the river to take the rickety boat off course, and as it did so, Ug-ha lost control, spilling both Bimmy and Hraf into the water.

Hraf was first to go over the edge of the boat, splashing into the water and quickly being carried away by the current. He had the wherewithal to toss out a length of rope in the direction of the boat, which Bimmy almost caught, but then ended up spilling out into the river himself. In a round or two, Bimmy was alright, with his swimming proficiency, he made it safely to shore. Hraf, though, struggled to find a breath, and continued to flounder in the current until, under the direction of Bimmy, Ug-ha could get the small boat near his fallen companion.

While Hraf was bashed against the rocks and floating tree trunks and stumps, Uh-ga also had problems, as he promptly wrecked the boat on those same rocks. Thankfully, though, that provided a stable place for Hraf to grab onto, and pull himself up from the choking river current. Bimmy accepted the rope, and helped pull both of his companions back to shore. Now, though, they were stuck on the south side of the river, with no path to get back across.

Getting Across the Bog

The Swamp to the south of the Keep on the Borderlands is an interesting item of note to DM's who might run this module, which I'm sure I'll cover whenever I get around to reviewing the experience. There are no details to the map included in the booklet, just that a swamp exists, so the module B2 upholds its reputation of being a true sandbox, but not just for the players, for the DM as well. In this case, I've created my own mini-campaign, in which the road to cross the swamp has been compromised, and while the keep marks the empire's most northern reaches, you can see here that the area is not quite yet secure. In any case, I'll describe the mini adventure I've created for the swamps at a later point in time.

The trek across the squishy, treacherous soil of the boggy marsh itself was dangerous in its own right. All three characters noticed immediately as they got away from the ridge of collected tree trunks, roots and detritus that made up the river's shore that the soil wasn't safe to walk on. While not as strong beneath the thick mat of peat and creeping ivies, mosses and stout, gnarled trees, the body of water that is the river extend much farther than it would seem, and there was a slight current under the peat mats that could easily drown any one of them. Soon, they found that someone had wisely set up a system of wooden planks and cross-braces, that helped spread out the weight of anyone walking across this mushy mess, so nobody could sink through and be carried away to their deaths. But, in their search for the missing elf who braved the "marsh road," (as this wooden walkway was called), they had to determine in which way the true path to the other side of the marsh was. When they reached their first fork in the path, they chose to go slightly east, rather than due south to the closest source of solid land.

They could find no evidence that either path was more frequently traveled, but thought that by the size of the trees and brush, that going more easterly might get them to more solid ground more quickly.

Attack of the Bullywugs

A few hundred feet past the fork in the path, Uh-ga noticed a definitely humanoid shape moving around among the roots of a few of the cypress trees.

Accompanied by a strange sucking sound, and then a low, chattering croak, the shadowy figure hid itself behind the cypress, or among the strange knobby cypress knees poking up through the bog. Hraf took a wild shot into the area with his shortbow, but did not make contact. As they tried to call out to whatever it was, to no avail, they decided to continue walking along the path, while keeping an eye on the area to stop the possibility of a surprise attack. Luckily for Hraf, surprise was not achieved, but unluckily for him, bullywugs don't need surprise. With their great leaping attack, a 4 foot tall frog man leapt from the bot, and struck the barbarian in the rear of the marching order first. Not before he let loose an arrow at the creature as it hurled through the air, though.

The trio were attacked by a series of 5 or 6 bullywugs as they continued to pull themselves up out of the muddy, mess of a bog and hurl themselves at the party. Hraf killed the first with his shortbow, then as Bimmy attempted to walk across the bog to the tree from which the attacks were primarily coming, he was pulled down, but managed to un-stick himself from the mud enough to get pulled back by Hraf after the deaths of a few more frog-men. Uh-ga lost control of his great club at one point, and resorted to pulling a 6 foot timber off of one of the walkways and punished his opponents with it. Eventually, they had overcome their opponents, with Hraf having taken the worst of the beating with that one flying leap attack. As they caught their breath, they decided to carry on down the path headed to the northeast. Bimmy, though, stopped for a moment, and took Hraf's dagger (the only edged weapon among them, we find out) to cut off the legs of the beasts. "Dude, those are people." said the DM. "Sure, they're frog people, but they are people." "Sure," said Bimmy's controlling player. "So We're not going to eat them. But the folks at the keep wouldn't be surprised at all, after we brought back all that crab meat, if we brought back giant frog legs. We won't lie to them, we'll just not edit in the full description. It's the difference between trying to sell the merchant 'giant frog legs' and 'giant frog [people] legs'." I have to say, his logic was pretty sound.

The Bullywug Lair

In the distance, as they followed this path for a few more yards, they spotted that there was a small mud and leather hut ahead, where the path reaches a little bit of more solid ground. Uh-ga walked closer to the hut, and the croaking sound of Bullywugs watching them wasn't lost on any of them. He took his great club, and lifted up the edge of the yurt door-flap, and saw that there were some satchels hanging from the supports of the roughly 6 foot tall ceilings, probably the personal belongings of the bullywugs. Combined with the rough straw floor, this was obviously what passed for a lair for frog men. Uh-ga turned, and took a step back to tell his companions what he saw, and was immediately struck in the chest by the flying leap of a nearby bullywug. The two of them fell off the path, and Uh-Ga slipped into the sucking mud in one area. With his exceptional strength, the player only had to roll a 19 or less to keep his head above the mud....which he took as his first opportunity to roll a natural 20, and immediately was sucked under the bog, and into the slow, creeping current of the river underneath, where our berzerker went into a final rage as he drowned to death in the mud.

Bimmy and Hraf were able to handle the remaining bullywugs who had first leaped onto the path. However, it was clear that there were many, many more coming out of the surrounding bog and swampy trees. Hraf immediately sprinted to the spot where Uh-ga had fallen in, saw that he had dissapeared, and then ran into the hut. Using his looting proficiency, he grabbed a hold of 3 or 4 of those satchels strung up from the ceiling, cut the strings, and ran out of the hut, under a hail of fish-bone spears down the path out of the reach of the damned bullywugs.

Escape Back to the Keep

Bimmy and Hraf made it back to the intersection of the two wooden walkways where they had first turned, and headed back to the shoreline where the rowboat had crashed. The two of them took some of the segments of walkway that led to the bullywugs, and crafted a fairly seaworthy pole raft by tying them together with Hraf's rope. On their success checks they actually rolled a critical success, and the raft is significantly better than that hollowed out shell of a boat they came over on. The two of them made it across the river, and then walked back to the keep. Bimmy passed his check to pass the Bullywug legs off as giant frog legs, and they sold off the small amount of treasure that they had claimed from the Bullywug lair.

They met their new companion, another Crow nomad, also a berzerker warrior (apparently the player didnt get his fill with the short-lived Uh-Ga).

At this point, the two human and a dwarf adventurers who had first set them on the path to the swamp assume that their elf friend who dissipated must have been either eaten by the bog itself, or killed by the giant frogs. However, the Sergeant at Arms, whom they met last session, offered to see if he could get the Castellan, the "lord" of this keep, to finance an effort to secure the swamp road to the south. He will even provide a map of the path that travelers used to use to get across, which will confirm that the party did, in fact, take a wrong turn which led them to the bullywugs.

Until next time; be excellent to each other, and party on dudes.